understanding bread
essential equipment
You can make a loaf of bread from start to finish with just your own two hands—but for first-rate results, you’re going to want some equipment. Here’s our guide to the essentials for making bakery-quality breads.
big ticket items
Instant-Read Thermometer (1) It’s helpful to use an instantread thermometer to check that breads are within a given temperature range before you pull them from the oven. A thermometer also comes in handy for taking the temperature of ingredients. A digital thermometer will tell you the temperature of your food almost immediately. Thermometers with long probes easily reach the center of a loaf. The Thermo Works Thermapen Mk4 ($99) has every bell and whistle. (Click here for more information on instant-read thermometers.)
Stand Mixer (2) A stand mixer, with its hands-free operation, numerous attachments, and strong mixing arm, is a must if you plan on baking bread regularly. Heft matters, as does a strong motor that can knead stiff dough with ease. Our favorite stand mixer is the KitchenAid Pro Line Series 7-Qt Bowl Lift Stand Mixer ($549.95). Our best buy is the KitchenAid Classic Plus Series 4.5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer ($229.99). (Click here for more information on stand mixers.)
Food Processor (3) Though not necessary for loaves, a food processor brings together pizza dough in a flash. Look for a workbowl that has a capacity of at least 11 cups. With a powerful motor, responsive pulsing action, sharp blades, and a simple design, the Cuisinart Custom 14 Food Processor ($199.99) aced all our tests.
Digital Scale (4) Weighing your ingredients ensures consistent results. We prefer digital scales for their readability and precision. Look for one that has a large weight range and that can be “zeroed.” The OXO Good Grips 11 lb. Food Scale with Pull Out Display ($49.99) has easy-to-read buttons, and its display can be pulled out from the platform when weighing bulky items.
Baking Stone (5) A ceramic baking stone conducts heat and transfers it evenly and steadily to the loaf, encouraging the development of a thick, crisp, nicely browned bottom crust. Look for a model made of clay or stone; it should be big enough to accommodate a large pizza. Our favorite is the Old Stone Oven Pizza Baking Stone ($38.69).
the pans we use
Rimmed Baking Sheet and Wire Cooling Rack (6) We bake a number of free-form loaves and buns on a rimmed baking sheet. A light-colored surface heats and browns breads evenly. You’ll want more than one thick, sturdy Wear- Ever Half Size Heavy Duty Sheet Pan (13 gauge) by Vollrath ($23.25) on hand. (Click here for more information on baking sheets.) And you’ll also want a wire cooling rack that fits inside for recipes like New York–Style Bagels, which we bake elevated on a rack. Even more important, cooling loaves on a wire rack allows air to circulate so the bread dries properly and retains a crisp crust. The CIA Bakeware 12-Inch x 17-Inch Cooling Rack ($15.95) is an essential.
Bundt Pan (7) Bundt pans turn out attractive sweet breads. Look for defined ridges, a 15-cup capacity, and nonstick, heavyweight cast aluminum. The Nordic Ware Platinum Collection Anniversary Bundt Pan ($26.95) creates evenly brown breads that release perfectly.
13 by 9-inch Baking Dish (7) Thick, tempered glass dishes retain heat to ensure deep, even browning on rolls. The Pyrex Basics 3 Quart Glass Oblong Baking Dish ($13.95) is sturdy, dishwasher-safe, and scratch-resistant.
13 by 9-inch Baking Pan (7) Sweet treats won’t stick to these straight-sided nonstick pans. The Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Nonstick Rectangular Cake Pan ($32.95) produces uniformly golden baked goods.
9-inch Round Cake Pan (7) We use a cake pan for deep-dish pizza, rolls, and sweet loaves. Look for pans with 2-inch-tall straight sides. We like light-toned pans for cake, but you should buy dark, nonstick pans for bread; they radiate more heat for browned breads. Our favorite is the Chicago Metallic Non-Stick 9” Round Cake Pan ($10.97).
Dutch Oven (8) The humid environment created in a covered Dutch oven helps to produce a dramatically open crumb structure and a shiny, crisp crust on breads. The Le Creuset 7¼-Quart Round French Oven ($349.99) is the gold standard of Dutch ovens.
Pullman Loaf Pan (9) This pan has a slide-on lid and produces a squared-off loaf with a compact crumb. We bake our versatile Pain de Mie and our Pumpernickel in a Pullman pan. We use the USA Pan 13 by 4-inch Pullman Loaf Pan & Cover ($33.95). (Avoid pans made from uncoated steel.)
8½ x 4½-inch Loaf Pan (9) We prefer 8½ x 4½-inch loaf pans to 9 x 5-inch pans; they produce tall loaves with rounder tops. Light-colored aluminum finishes yield pale loaves, while superdark finishes overbrown bread. The Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Nonstick Loaf Pan ($21) is just right.
Cast-Iron Skillet (10) A cast- iron skillet creates crisp crusts on flatbreads and cornbread. You’ll never replace the preseasoned Lodge Classic Cast-Iron Skillet. You’ll want both the 10-inch ($15.92) and 12-inch ($33.31) pans.
Liquid Measuring Cups (1) It’s helpful to have multiple sizes of liquid measuring cups for bread baking. Whisk together your liquid ingredients right in the cup before mixing. The industry-standard Pyrex Measuring Cup is unbeatable. We use the 2-cup ($5.99), 4-cup ($11.99), and 8-cup ($12.90) sizes in this book.
Dry Measuring Cups (1) You should be weighing the bulk of your ingredients, but you’ll still need a set of measuring cups for small quantities of dry ingredients. Look for heavy, well-constructed, evenly weighted, stainless-steel models, with easy-to-read measurement markings and long, straight handles. We use the very accurate Amco Houseworks Professional Performance 4-Piece Measuring Cup Set ($14.95).
Measuring Spoons (1) We prefer heavy, well-constructed steel measuring spoons with long, sturdy, well-designed handles. Choose deep bowls; shallow bowls allow more liquid to spill with the shake of an unsteady hand. The Cuisipro Stainless Steel Measuring Spoons Set ($11.95) is our recommended set.
Oven Thermometer (2) It’s common for ovens to run hot or cold. The most reliable way to know the exact temperature of your oven is to use a thermometer. The CDN Pro Accurate Oven Thermometer ($8.70) has a clear display and attaches to the oven rack securely. Note that it is manufactured in two factories, so your model may not look exactly like the picture.
Ruler (3) A ruler is helpful for measuring how high a proofing dough has risen and for cutting dough into pieces of a certain size. Stainless steel, not wood, is best because it’s easy to clean. An 18-inch ruler will handle all kitchen tasks.
Rolling Pin (3) There are many styles of rolling pins: We like the classic French-style wood rolling pins without handles. These pins come straight and tapered. We tend to reach for straight pins, which make achieving even dough thickness and rolling out larger disks easy. The J.K. Adams Plain Maple Rolling Dowel ($13.95) has a gentle weight and a slightly textured surface for less sticking.
Pastry Brush (3) We use a pastry brush to paint loaves with egg wash before they enter the oven or to finish baked breads with melted butter. Our favorite pastry brush, the OXO Good Grips Silicone Pastry Brush ($6.99), is silicone and far surpasses those with natural bristles, as it is heat-resistant and easy to clean. It sports perforated flaps that trap liquid, and an angled head to reach tight spots.
Bench Scraper (4) This basic tool is handy for transferring bread dough from one surface to another and for cutting dough into pieces. Our winner is the Dexter-Russell 6” Dough Cutter/Scraper—Sani Safe Series ($7.01). It has a comfortable handle, and the deeply beveled edge cuts through dough quickly.
Bowl Scraper (4) The best way to remove or fold sticky dough is with a bowl scraper. This handheld spatula is curved, with enough grip to scrape the bowl clean and enough rigidity to move heavy dough easily. Our favorite models are made of contoured silicone covering a metal insert, like the iSi Basics Silicone Scraper Spatula ($5.99).
Serrated Knife (5) You need a good knife to make it all the way through your loaves, from crust to crumb. The well- balanced Wüsthof Classic Bread Knife, 10 inches ($89.95), has deeply tapered pointed serrations that slice through bread with ease. (Click here for more information on serrated knives.)
Pizza Cutters (5) Wheel-like pizza cutters do the obvious—cut pizza into slices. But they’re also helpful for quickly and evenly slicing dough into pieces or strips with clean edges. The clean-cutting OXO Good Grips 4” Pizza Wheel ($12.99) is comfortable to hold and allows for a powerful grip. The blade is 4 inches tall, so it rolls right over towering crusts with ease.
specialty items
Towel-Lined Colander (6) Bakers achieve the symmetrical round loaves known as boules by transferring the dough to shallow woven baskets called bannetons (or brotforms) for the last rising step before baking. (Click here for more information on bannetons.) In this book, we get the same results by using a 5-quart colander (measuring about 11 inches in diameter and 4 inches deep) that has been lined with a linen dish towel to prevent sticking.
Couche (7) To proof artisan-style breads, bakers use a couche, made from heavy linen, which keeps the dough’s shape intact and its surface uniformly dry as it proofs and rises. Only 100 percent linen cloths will release the dough without sticking or tugging. Our favorite is the San Francisco Baking Institute 18” Linen Canvas (Couche) ($8). (Click here for more information on couches.)
Flipping Board (7) To move baguettes from the couche to the oven, professional bakers use a flipping board. A homemade substitute, made by taping two 16 by 4-inch pieces of heavy cardboard together with packaging tape, works equally well. We use the Baguette Flipping Board ($12) sold by Breadtopia.
Lame (7) You’ll need a curved-blade lame to produce the almond-shaped slashes on rustic breads and baguettes. It approaches the dough at a low angle to create a cut with a raised flap. Our favorite is the Breadtopia Bread Lame ($9.50).
Pizza Peel (7) A peel is a wide, paddle-like board or metal spatula with a long handle that’s useful for sliding pizza and free-form breads into and out of a hot oven. Metal baking peels are particularly easy to clean and store.
Lava Rocks (8) We pour boiling water over disposable pans full of preheated lava rocks, which absorb and retain heat, to create a steamy environment in the oven that helps rustic breads develop a crisp crust. You can find these irregularly shaped rocks, which are used for gas grills, at many hardware stores. (Click here for more information on lava rocks.)
Disposable Pans (8) We use disposable pie plates to hold lava rocks. We also use disposable roasting pans to cover loaves baked on a baking stone when we want to trap steam for a thick, crisp crust.
the bread baker’s pantry
Once you start baking bread regularly, you’ll always want the basics on hand. We’ve included essential ingredients, plus some that will take your breads to the next level.
flour
Bread starts with the grain, so it’s helpful to know what flour to use and when. The main difference among varieties is the amount of protein they contain. More protein leads to more gluten development, which, in turn, translates to chewier bread. For all flours, we prefer unbleached to bleached because bleached flour can carry off-flavors. (Most cake flours, which we do not use in bread baking, however, are bleached.) You can store flour in an airtight container in your pantry for up to one year. Here are the flours we use in this book.
All-Purpose Flour is the most versatile variety. It has a moderate protein content (10 to 11.7 percent, depending on the brand) and is good when you want a relatively tender, soft crumb, like for quick breads, rolls, and sweet breads. We develop our recipes with easy-to-find Gold Medal Unbleached All-Purpose Flour (10.5 percent protein). Pillsbury All-Purpose Unbleached Flour (also 10.5 percent protein) offers comparable results. If you use an all-purpose flour with a higher protein content (such as King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour, with 11.7 percent protein) in recipes that call for all- purpose flour, the results may be a bit drier and chewier.
However, there are some recipes for which the higher protein content of King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour is desirable, such as Croissants. When we made them with regular all-purpose flour, the dough tore; when we made them with bread flour, the dough was hard to roll. King Arthur all-purpose flour is the perfect compromise. If you cannot find King Arthur all- purpose flour for recipes that call for it, use bread flour.
Bread Flour has a high protein content (12 to 14 percent), which ensures strong gluten development and thus a chewy texture. Because of its structure-building properties, we use it for many of the breads in this book. You cannot substitute all-purpose flour in these recipes; the bread will not be able to support an airy, chewy crumb. We use King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour in the test kitchen.
Whole-Wheat Flour has a distinctive flavor and texture because it is made from the entire wheat berry unlike white flours, which are ground solely from the endosperm. Whole-wheat flour has a high protein content (about 13 percent), but it behaves differently than white flour, and it can make breads dense. We rely on a combination of white and whole-wheat flours. We use King Arthur Premium Whole Wheat Flour in the test kitchen. Whole-wheat flour contains more fat than refined flours and goes rancid more quickly; store it in the freezer and bring it to room temperature before using it. (Click here for more information on whole-wheat flour.)
Rye Flour has an earthy, slightly tangy flavor. It comes in white or light, medium, whole grain, and pumpernickel, and each produces a different bread. The darker the rye flour, the more bran that’s been left in after milling. We use light or medium and pumpernickel in this book. Rye flour is low in one of the partial proteins necessary for developing gluten, so you need to cut it with some white flour to avoid dense bread. Store rye flour like whole-wheat flour.
Cornmeal comes in many different varieties. Because the texture and flavor varies, it’s important to use the cornmeal variety that a recipe calls for. For example, our Southern-Style Skillet Cornbread requires fine or medium stone-ground cornmeal. While coarse stone-ground cornmeal has great texture and strong corn flavor, it does not soften and can make bread gritty.
Semolina Flour is a golden- colored flour that is made by coarsely grinding the endosperm of durum wheat. This Italian flour gives our Sicilian-Style Thick-Crust Pizza a creamy crumb. Its coarse texture makes it good for dusting a pizza peel.
Durum Flour is the by-product of semolina production. Durum means “hard” in Latin; it’s very high in protein, but not in gluten-forming proteins. Like semolina flour, it’s associated with pasta. Fine, powdery, and flavorful, the flour is high in beta-carotene and gives bread a golden hue. Be sure to use durum flour for our Durum Bread; semolina flour gives it a gummy crumb.
chemical leaveners
Quick breads rise with chemical leaveners. There are two varieties, and they can be used alone or in combination.
Baking Soda is an alkali and therefore requires an acidic ingredient in the batter or dough, such as buttermilk, in order to produce carbon dioxide. The leavening action happens right after mixing, so you should bake right away. In addition to leavening, baking soda also promotes browning.
Baking Powder is a mixture of baking soda, a dry acid, and double-dried cornstarch. The cornstarch absorbs moisture and prevents the premature production of gas. Baking powder works twice—when it first comes in contact with a liquid, and again in response to heat. Once its container is opened, it will lose its effectiveness after six months. Our favorite powder is Argo Double Acting Baking Powder.
yeast
Yeast comes in two forms: fresh and dry. We don’t use fresh in the test kitchen, as it is highly perishable. There are two types of dry yeast: active dry yeast and instant yeast. We prefer to use instant yeast in our recipes. Store any yeast in the refrigerator or freezer to slow deterioration.
Active dry yeast is treated with heat, which kills the outermost cells. Therefore, it must be proofed, or dissolved in liquid with some sugar, before use. Proofing sloughs off the dead cells and renders the yeast active. To substitute active dry yeast for instant yeast in a recipe, use 25 percent more of it to compensate for the greater quantity of inactive yeast cells. And you’ll need to dissolve active dry yeast in a portion of the water from the recipe, heated to 110 degrees. Then, let it stand for 5 minutes before adding it to the remaining wet ingredients.
Instant yeast (also called rapid-rise yeast) is our choice in the test kitchen because it doesn’t need to be proofed and can be added directly to the dry ingredients—the result of undergoing a gentler drying process that does not destroy the outer cells. We have also found that it yields breads with a cleaner flavor than those made with active dry because it doesn’t contain any dead yeast cells. Storing yeast in the refrigerator or freezer will slow deterioration. To substitute instant yeast for active dry in a recipe, use 25 percent less of it.
liquids
The proportion of liquid in a bread dough corresponds to how hydrated, or wet, it is. Wetter doughs tend to feature irregular holes and a pleasing chew; drier doughs have a tighter crumb structure and a soft chew. (Click here for more information on bread hydration.) The type of liquid you use also affects the loaf’s structure.
Water is the default liquid in bread baking. When it mixes with flour, the proteins in the flour hydrate and begin to form gluten.
Milk features in a lot of our recipes. The fat in the milk tenderizes the crumb and can weaken the gluten structure; the proteins can contribute to the browning of the loaf.
Beer is, in some ways, like liquid bread: The flavor compounds in beer are similar to those in a bread dough starter. Therefore, its addition can give your bread the more complex flavor of one made with a starter. We use mild-flavored lager, like Budweiser; the fermentation process it goes through allows the bready flavors to come forward.
fats
Fat isn’t just for flavor. The presence of fat—even just a tablespoon—can affect the crumb of your bread. When you add fat in large enough amounts, it coats the flour proteins, making them less able to form a strong gluten network; that means tender, less open bread. Here are the fats we use to enrich our breads.
Butter is a must in most enriched bread recipes. We use unsalted butter. (The salt amount in different brands of butter varies; plus, salted butters have a higher water content.) Most unsalted butter contains 81 to 82 percent fat; some European-style butters contain 83 to 86 percent fat (and therefore less water). While this difference isn’t noticeable enough in most breads to warrant splurging on premium butter, we recommend it for our Croissants and Kouign Amann. The higher fat content makes the dough easier to manipulate and results in superior layering.
Oil is usually added in small quantities—a tablespoon or so—to add extensibility to doughs and to tenderize breads that don’t need to be rich in flavor. Neutral-tasting oil, such as vegetable oil, adds tenderness without changing the dough’s flavor. Extra-virgin olive oil, on the other hand, can give bread a slightly earthy flavor, which is great in certain applications. For breads that are baked at superhot temperatures, especially flatbreads, a good amount of oil in dough can also result in a crisp crust: the oil essentially fries the dough in the oven for our Red Pepper Coques.
Vegetable Shortening is a solid fat that contains no water. As a result, it coats the proteins in flour even more effectively than does butter. We use it in our Fluffy Dinner Rolls for superior tenderness, though its flat flavor needs to be bolstered with butter.
eggs
Typically used in sweet doughs, eggs add density to breads. The yolks give doughs richness, and the whites contribute extra structure. We also brush a lot of our breads with a mixture of egg and water (with a pinch of salt). The protein in the white browns the loaf’s exterior, and the fat in the yolk makes the crust shiny. The salt in the wash doesn’t just give it flavor; it denatures the proteins, making the wash more fluid and easier to brush evenly and gently over delicate doughs.
salt
In bread baking, where you’re working only with flour, water, yeast, and salt, the amount of salt you use really impacts flavor. Unless otherwise stated, we use inexpensive table salt in our bread recipes because it is fine-grained and thus dissolves easily. But salt isn’t just for flavor; it actually strengthens the gluten network in dough to help make chewy bread. (Click here for more information on the role of salt.)
sugar
Many bread recipes call for adding a couple tablespoons of sugar to add subtle sweetness and to help with browning. The most common sugar choices in bread are granulated, for a cleaner flavor, and honey, for an earthier flavor. Note that liquid honey can contribute to the hydration level of the bread dough.
the world of breads
Bread baking has its own language. We talk about the flavor and the texture of a finished loaf of bread in the context of its two main parts: the crumb (the interior of the loaf) and the crust (the exterior of the loaf). The crumb constitutes the bulk of the bread and can be either lean and chewy (the result of using just flour, water, salt, and yeast) or enriched so that is has a more luxurious flavor and soft texture (from the addition of dairy, butter, and/or eggs). The crumb can be tight or closed, meaning it lacks interior holes if the dough contains a relatively low amount of liquid, or it can be open, meaning it features larger and sometimes irregular holes if the dough contains a relatively high amount of liquid. The crust—the browned sheath that encases the crumb—varies across breads as well. It can be soft, golden, and barely detectable, or it can be dark brown and satisfyingly crunchy. We cover a world of breads in this book; below are the main categories and details on their crumbs and crusts.
Quick Breads (1) These easy-to-make loaves rely on chemical leaveners and are often baked in a loaf pan. They require just some hand-stirring, as the goal is to avoid developing a lot of gluten, which can make quick breads tough. They are tender from the addition of lots of butter or oil, and have a cakey closed crumb and no defined crust. We often eat quick breads, like our Quick Cheese Bread, which features pockets of gooey cheddar, as a snack.
Sandwich Loaves (2) Sandwich bread is yeasted and typically features a soft, tight crumb, as it’s often conditioned with tenderizing ingredients. Think about the perfect white sandwich loaf, mild in flavor and a little pillowy, like our American Sandwich Bread. Baked at a low to moderate temperature, sandwich breads have a thin crust. They’re typically baked in a loaf pan, but there are also free-form versions. There are also textural exceptions, such as our Spicy Olive Bread, which has a little more chew and is more rustic.
Rolls and Buns (3) These small shaped breads often accompany breakfast if they’re sweet, or dinner if they’re savory. With the exception of our Rustic Dinner Rolls, which have the crumb structure of artisan bread, rolls are typically tender with a closed crumb and an unassuming golden brown crust. Some are intricately shaped, like Kaiser Rolls. They can be richly plush, like the butter-packed Parker House Rolls, or they can be leaner and more milky-tasting, like our Fluffy Dinner Rolls.
Rustic Loaves (4) The class of breads you find at an artisan bakery are known as rustic loaves. They contain little or no fat and lots of water, and they develop a lot of gluten to support large air pockets. A good rustic loaf has a thick but crisp outer crust that breaks pleasingly to the chewy, complex crumb. Rustic loaves sometimes incorporate a sponge or even a natural starter, like our Sourdough Bread, for a more open texture and a tangier aroma.
Flatbreads and Pizzas (5) These breads are all about the crust, and they’re often meals in bread form. Though there’s a lot of variation across the category, these international breads are often rolled thin, sometimes topped, and typically baked on a baking stone. Other times they’re pressed into a rimmed baking sheet. Some styles, like focaccia, sport large holes, but the crumb structure is often more even rather than irregular. Thick or rectangular pizzas and flatbreads can be almost cakey—a desirable quality in our Sicilian-Style Thick-Crust Pizza—while others are chewy on the inside and supercrisp and charred on the outside, like Thin-Crust Pizza. Still other flatbreads don’t have much of a crumb at all, like Flour Tortillas.
Enriched Breads (6) A bread that is augmented with butter, sugar, eggs, and/or dairy is considered enriched. This category includes some sweetened, rich, everyday breads like Portuguese Sweet Bread and some downright luxurious loaves, like No-Knead Brioche, which has a soft, tender crumb and a golden hue from the addition of lots of butter and egg yolks. These breads aren’t very chewy, as the amount of fat in them impedes gluten development. Their crust is thin and soft.
Laminated Breads (7) Often more like pastry—think Croissants—than bread, a laminated bread is one composed of many alternating sheets of fat and dough, which bake into airy breads with many layers. The most traditional way to achieve this is to form a square block of butter that you wrap with a yeasted flour-and-water dough before rolling out and turning multiple times. In the oven, the water in the butter turns to steam, lifting apart the layers of dough, while the fat in the butter provides flavor. The concept of layering fat and dough is similar for recipes like Mallorcas, where you brush the dough with melted butter before rolling it to separate the layers with fat.
bread baking, at a glance
Every yeasted bread is unique, yet virtually all follow the same progression of steps that take it from raw ingredients to finished loaves and rolls. Think of these steps as the key movements of a dance. As you touch, observe, and manipulate more and different doughs, you’ll become more in tune with the rhythm of bread baking, and these core steps will become second nature. Each new bread will introduce new twists and flourishes to a pattern you know well and can execute fluidly, giving you a lifetime of better baking. Here, we spell out the essentials of these steps; in the pages that follow, we’ll break each one down into more detail, so you’re armed with all of our test kitchen knowledge.
The step that gets it all started is mixing (1). This is where you combine your dry and wet goods in the stand mixer to create a shaggy amalgamation of ingredients. This rough mass of dough then becomes smooth during kneading (2). You increase the mixer speed and knead until the dough is elastic, signaling that it has developed an adequate gluten structure. At this point, the dough is ready for the first rise (3). It is during this fermentation period that the yeast creates carbon dioxide bubbles that cause the bread to expand. Once the dough grows to the size indicated in the recipe (usually the dough doubles in size), dividing and shaping (4) takes place. You start by pressing down on the dough to deflate it. Then you either divide it (for rolls, buns, or multiple loaves) or shape it whole. The shape will depend on the type of bread you are making; here, we’re featuring a basic round boule, which you roll between your cupped hands on a counter until a ball forms. Forming a taut shape ensures an even, lofty final loaf. Then you rest the formed loaf again for a second rise (5). The yeast is redistributed during shaping, so the loaf achieves more volume at this point before baking, when the hot oven causes the bread to expand one more time to its final height. You can test that the loaf is done rising with your knuckle. During baking (6), starches gelatinize to set the crumb, and sugars and proteins caramelize to create a browned, crusty loaf. But the process doesn’t end here; there’s cooling and storing (7). Most breads must cool fully before you slice and eat them so that the crumb sets to the perfect texture. And if you don’t eat the loaf the day you make it, there are guidelines for storing it to ensure that it maintains the best texture.
1 mixing, in depth
At the core of bread baking are the basic ingredients, which begin to morph and change as soon as they meet: The flour hydrates, the yeast awakens, and the gluten proteins that will eventually give bread structure unravel and come together. Bread recipes are carefully formulated. So to start the mixing process, you need to gather and measure your ingredients with care. We forgo measuring cups and spoons (except for ingredients that are measured in small amounts, like salt and yeast, or for mix-ins like raisins and nuts) and use a digital kitchen scale. The ratio of flour to water in your recipe greatly impacts the end result, so accuracy is crucial. Weigh the dry ingredients into one vessel (usually the bowl of the stand mixer) and the wet ingredients into another (usually a liquid measuring cup). Whisk together the dry ingredients to blend thoroughly; do the same for the wet.
Once you weigh and whisk your wet and dry ingredients, it’s time to bring them together: We almost always start our breads in the stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment. This c- or s-shaped tool can grasp stiffer bread dough, engaging it in a motion that stretches and folds it. While mixing on low speed, slowly stream the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until a cohesive dough starts to form and no dry flour remains. This will take about 2 minutes. You should scrape the mixer bowl with a rubber spatula as needed to ensure that everything is incorporated.
We add the wet ingredients to the dry rather than the reverse because it prevents pockets of flour from forming and a messy, crusted mixing bowl. Why mix on low instead of just cranking up the mixer and getting it done faster? Kneading is all about building structure, but a more gentle approach is necessary to make sure the ingredients are well distributed and hydrated before that can happen. Mixing also allows the proteins in the flour (more on them in “Kneading, In Depth”) to become friendly with each other before they cross-link into sheets of gluten. A cohesive but shaggy product signals that the dough has been agitated just enough before kneading.
mixing dough
1 Whisk together the dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer.
2 Whisk together the wet ingredients in a 4-cup liquid measuring cup.
3 Using the dough hook and mixing on low speed, slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.
4 Mix until a cohesive dough starts to form and no dry flour remains.
science corner
salt: not just for flavor
Forget to season a dish, and it might taste flat; forget to add salt to dough, and the bread will be not only tasteless but likely dense and crumbly. Salt strengthens gluten; without it, the gluten structure cannot support the carbon dioxide bubbles that expand inside the dough.
don’t forget!
DON’T ADD FLOUR The dough should look cohesive but shaggy; it will smooth out during kneading. It’s too early to determine if the dough is too sticky, and adding extra flour could compromise the final texture of the loaf.
the science of hydration
Of course you need a liquid to transform flour into dough. And in bread baking, sometimes wetter is better: The more water (or other liquid) in a dough—that is, the more hydrated the dough is—the stronger and more extensible the gluten strands. If the gluten strands are strong and extensible, they can support the starch granules and gas bubbles that hydrate and swell as the dough rises and bakes, giving you an airier bread with good chew. During baking, the water within the dough turns to steam, creating hollow pockets as moisture rushes to escape. Extra water also creates a looser dough, which allows the steam bubbles to expand more easily. In drier dough, gas bubbles have a harder time forming and are more likely to collapse. Getting those gas bubbles to hold their shape until the dough has risen and set in the oven is the key to creating an open, airy crumb.
calculating baker’s percentages
Before you can accurately determine how hydrated a bread dough is, you’ll need to understand baker’s percentages. Professional bakers rely on this method to formulate their recipes. Once you understand them, you’ll be able to get a feel for what your dough and baked bread will be like before you even mix them. (They also make scaling recipes up or down a simple matter of multiplication or division.) Baker’s percentages present the quantity of each ingredient as a percentage by the weight of the amount of flour, which is always set at 100 percent.
The most important part of a baker’s percentage is the weight of the liquid relative to the weight of the flour—the hydration. Sandwich-bread dough, with a typical 60 percent hydration (the weight of the liquid is 60 percent of the weight of the flour), for example, yields a loaf with a tighter crumb, whereas the 80 percent hydration level of rustic breads (the weight of the liquid is 80 percent of the weight of the flour) is responsible for its airy crumb and large, irregular holes.
To calculate the hydration of a recipe, first weigh the flour and liquid. Divide the weight of the liquid by the weight of the flour and then multiply the result by 100. For example, a recipe containing 1¼ cups of water (10 ounces) and 3 cups of all-purpose flour (15 ounces) will have a 67 percent ([10 ÷ 15] × 100 = 67) hydration level, indicating a moderately airy crumb. To find the baker’s percentage of other ingredients, follow this procedure, weighing the ingredient, dividing it by the total flour weight, and multiplying by 100.
visualizing hydration levels
We were curious to see what would happen if we took hydration levels to the extreme: Our recipe for Classic Italian Bread has a 67 percent hydration level and features modest-size holes. We made a version of it in which we lowered the hydration to 50 percent and another in which we increased the hydration to 80 percent. The 50 percent hydrated loaf had a tight, fine crumb, was dense, and showed little spread or expansion. The 80 percent hydrated loaf, on the other hand, hardly rose, spreading out instead of up, and it featured a loose, open crumb with large, irregular holes. Too much liquid in a recipe can actually dilute and weaken the gluten it typically works so well to build, hindering a bread’s ability to rise.
Too dry (50 percent hydration)
Just right (67 percent hydration)
Too wet (80 percent hydration)
2 kneading, in depth
Part of the wonder of bread baking is how many changes in the dough happen without the cook even touching it. It must have seemed like magic to early bakers to watch bread rise and expand of its own accord. But there is one major mechanical step that allows this magic to happen: kneading. Proper kneading incorporates air, distributes ingredients, and, most important, develops gluten, which gives yeasted bread chew. As we learned, mixing starts the process by creating a weak, disorganized matrix of gluten proteins. Then, kneading does the bulk of the work, the mechanical action straightening out these proteins and aligning them so they can cross-link into a strong gluten network. This gluten structure is key: It allows bread to expand without bursting. (For more information, see “The Science of Gluten”.)
You can knead most bread doughs by hand or in a stand mixer, and we’ve detailed both techniques. While hand kneading can be a gratifying process, we recommend using a stand mixer with the dough hook attachment for this task. Not only is it easier—the mixer does all the work—but you’re more likely to get good results if you use your mixer. Kneading dough by hand can be messy, and many home cooks add a lot of extra flour, which can compromise the texture of the baked loaf. On a practical level, it takes up to 25 minutes—and some well-developed forearm muscles—to knead dough fully by hand, and just about 8 minutes in the stand mixer with the dough hook. However, if you do not own a stand mixer, you can still make a good loaf of bread from most doughs. (We have indicated throughout this book when a dough is just too wet, sticky, or enriched to be kneaded by hand.) The trick is to use a rhythmic, gentle motion that stretches and massages the dough.
kneading in a food processor
For many bread recipes we would caution against the rough treatment of a food processor, which can tear apart the strands of gluten that give bread structure and the ability to rise. But for pizzas, flatbreads, and other doughs where we want chew but the structure is less important, we like to put it to use. Many of these doughs would require 15 to 20 minutes of traditional kneading in the stand mixer to become a shiny, elastic mass—but less than 2 minutes in the food processor. The only exceptions in this category are extremely wet doughs with a hydration level of more than 75 percent, doughs with very large yields. Here’s how to ensure the best results.
use metal blades Many food processors come with dull plastic blades meant to mimic the kneading action of a stand mixer. But we found they tend to drag the dough or leave it stuck to the sides of the bowl, out of reach of the stubby blades. A sharp slicing action is essential to forming dough quickly, as the longer you process, the more you risk overheating the dough.
use ice water The forceful action of a food processor creates friction, pumping a lot of heat into dough. To counteract this effect, it’s important to use ice water to create a final dough with a temperature around 75 degrees. (Lower temperatures mean the dough will take longer to ferment; higher temperatures can kill yeast.)
kneading in a stand mixer
1 Just after increasing the mixer speed to medium-low, the dough will lack form and will stick to the sides of the bowl.
2 After 4 minutes, the dough will still be tacky, but it will start to pull away from the sides of the bowl and look more uniform.
3 After 8 minutes, the dough will pull away from the sides of the bowl and have a compact form.
4 Knead the dough by hand for 30 seconds to form a smooth, round ball.
kneading by hand
1 After mixing the ingredients, transfer the shaggy dough to a lightly floured counter and shape it into a rough ball.
2 Start each stroke by gently pressing the dough down and away from you with the heel of your hand.
3 Lift the edge of the dough that’s farthest away from you and fold the dough in half toward you.
4 Lightly sprinkle the dough with flour as needed to coax the dough into a smooth mass. After about 4 minutes, the dough should look smooth.
5 Press the dough forward again. After about 8 minutes it should begin to turn smooth and elastic.
6 Repeat folding and pressing until the dough is smooth and elastic and forms a ball. This should take 15 to 25 minutes.
key equipment
stand mixers
A stand mixer is one of the most expensive appliances in your kitchen, but if you’re going to bake bread at home regularly, it’s something you’ll want within your reach. Because of its importance, we’ve done some of our most extensive testing in the test kitchen with stand mixers so you can make a sound investment. Here’s what we’ve learned.
planetary action is vital Mixers with a stationary bowl and a single mixing arm that uses planetary action work much better than those with a rotating bowl and two stationary beaters because they are much less likely to get clogged up when mixing stiff doughs.
large, squat bowls are best If the bowl is too tall, small batches of dough don’t get mixed properly, and scraping down the sides of the bowl is difficult. A wide, shallow bowl is ideal. A mixer that holds less than 4½ quarts is not large enough to hold a batch of bread dough.
consider a bowl lift Tilt-head mixers are fine, but the prolonged running of the motor can cause the latch locking down the tilt head on some mixers to stop working over time.
Our favorite stand mixer is the Pro Line Series 7-Qt Bowl Lift Stand Mixer from KitchenAid. This powerful, smartly designed machine handles batches of stiff dough without flinching. We like the bowl-lift design and large vertical bowl handle that aids pouring. At $549.95, this mixer isn’t cheap, but it’s a worthy investment. Thanks to its power, heft, simple operation, and relatively wallet-friendly price, the smaller sibling, the KitchenAid Classic Plus Series 4.5-Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer ($229.99), earns Best Buy status.
when is the dough properly kneaded?
There are two ways to determine when you’ve kneaded dough long enough so that the gluten is fully developed.
1 Does the dough clear the sides of the bowl? If not, keep going. The dough on the left is still sticking slightly. The dough on the right clears the sides of the bowl.
2 Is the dough elastic? If not, keep going. The dough on the right can be pulled like a rubber band without snapping and springing back into place. The dough on the left lacks elasticity and breaks when pulled, signaling that the gluten proteins have not yet cross-linked into a strong network.
when should you add more flour to dough?
Sticky dough can be difficult to work with and may require the addition of a small amount of flour to tighten up. But stickiness isn’t always bad; wet, high-hydration doughs for rustic breads and sweet doughs enriched with lots of butter or eggs will naturally be more tacky than sandwich bread or dinner roll doughs. Most doughs require the addition of more flour if they fail to clear the sides of the bowl in their kneading time. To ensure you get the proper dough consistency and bread texture, mix in additional flour slowly, 1 tablespoon at a time. And never add more than ¼ cup of extra flour to a recipe.
the no-knead method
While we’ve outlined the benefits of kneading, you can actually make good bread without this mechanical step with our chewy, open-crumbed, thick-crusted Almost No-Knead Bread. (We also forgo kneading in our No-Knead Brioche and our Rosemary Focaccia.) Kneading is replaced with a very wet dough and an overnight resting period, which produces gluten slowly—and without any work. Just before baking, the dough is kneaded by hand for less than a minute (just 10 to 15 times), shaped, and baked in a preheated Dutch oven. Because of the long rising time, just ¼ teaspoon yeast is required in our Almost No-Knead Bread recipe. While this amount produces sufficient rise, it doesn’t contribute much flavor. Our recipe relies on beer and vinegar to amp up the malty, yeasty flavors in the bread. Try this unique recipe when you want an easy, hands-off way to achieve artisan-style bread.
science corner
what happens if you overknead dough?
Proper kneading is essential for developing gluten in doughs, but there can be too much of a good thing. Overkneading causes the dough to become warm and to turn from a wheaty tan color to a dull white, producing baked loaves with a sickly pallor and expired flavors. If the dough is kneaded too long, the action of a stand mixer’s dough hook creates too much heat through friction and also kneads excessive amounts of air into the dough, bleaching it of flavor and color in a process called oxidation. Once your dough clears the sides of the bowl and feels smooth and elastic, stop kneading.
don’t forget!
DON’T CRANK UP THE MIXER SPEED The motors of even the best home stand mixers can burn out if they’re kneading heavy bread dough at too high a speed; plus, kneading at a high speed makes it easy to overknead or rip the gluten network.
SCRAPE DOWN THE BOWL AND HOOK If the whole mass of dough doesn’t engage with the mixer attachment, it won’t be properly kneaded. Further, if the dough seems to ride up the dough hook instead of staying in the bowl, you’ll want to scrape down the hook.
KNEAD BY HAND This final 30 seconds of hand kneading forms the dough into a smooth, round ball for rising.
the science of gluten
what is gluten exactly?
Gluten is the protein developed in bread making that gives bread chew. This elastic protein is formed when two partial proteins present in wheat flour, glutenin and gliadin, bond. Glutenin provides dough with strength, while gliadin provides stretch. Glutenin and gliadin come in contact with water during mixing, in a process called hydration. Moistening the proteins allows them to unwind and become flexible. Then, through mixing, they begin to link up with one another to form long, elastic chains of gluten. Finally, through prolonged kneading, the proteins are aligned and continue to cross-link until the chains combine to form a membrane-like gluten network. Here’s an easy way to look at it: Imagine these proteins as bundled-up balls of yarn that need to be unwound and tied together into one longer piece that’s then sewn into a wider sheet. In their balled-up state they can’t be tied together; first you have to untangle and straighten them. Liquid does the untangling, mixing ties the proteins together, and kneading sews them into a sheet.
why is gluten important?
A strong gluten network provides dough with structure to expand. Starch granules in the flour swell when hydrated, while yeast creates gas bubbles; both of these stretch the network, and it traps the air—much like a balloon—so that the bread develops an airy crumb. Gluten’s ability to stretch corresponds with its ability to give bread chew.
Protein strands glutenin and gliadin wrap around starch granules in flour.
In the presence of water, the strands unwind and link to form a network of gluten.
what does gluten look like?
In the below photos, we isolated gluten in low-protein cake flour and in high-protein bread flour. We did this by creating two basic flour-and-water doughs and rinsing them until all the starch washed away. The cake flour dough (left) formed a very small amount of sticky, weak gluten that cannot be stretched, while the high-protein bread flour dough (right) formed a large ball of highly resilient, rubbery gluten. The bread flour gluten could be stretched very thin without tearing. This structure traps air in breads, providing high rise and good texture.
what affects gluten development?
flour The protein content of the flour you’re using determines how much gluten can be developed. More glutenin and gliadin mean more cross-linking and a more elastic network.
water The more water there is in the dough, the more hydrated it will be, meaning that the proteins can unravel more readily to bind into a strong network.
kneading time The longer you knead a dough (to a certain point), the stronger the network will be. Think about the difference between a chewy loaf of bread (that’s kneaded for 8 minutes) and a tender muffin (that’s simply whisked together).
3 first rise, in depth
Once the dough is done kneading, the visual transformation begins: The dough lightens and rises. You transfer your ball of dough to a greased container and let it sit for a period at room temperature (for most recipes). Yes, the activity of the yeast causes your ball of dough to grow, but on a more technical level the whole mass of dough is fermenting, so we call this first rise bulk fermentation. This is what makes yeasted bread different from quick breads: The characteristics of a good loaf—an airy crumb, a satisfying chew, a tall stature—develop thanks to the interplay between the yeast and gluten during this metabolic process.
Fermentation is arguably the oldest of cooking techniques—when any food sits for a certain period of time, it is going to taste and smell quite different because of the activity of various microbes. Mixing and kneading initiate the fermentation process by distributing the yeast throughout the dough and hydrating it; the yeast must absorb enough moisture to activate. (For more information, see “The Science of Yeast”.) The dough has a chance to rest, so the gluten, which worked hard during kneading, relaxes, becoming supple. It is within this environment that the yeast cells go to work, consuming sugars in the flour to release carbon dioxide and alcohol. The expansion of carbon dioxide bubbles within this relaxed, elastic dough is like slowly blowing air into a balloon, and the gluten is what holds the gas within the dough. The indicator for when many doughs are properly fermented is when it has doubled in size—the point at which most of the available sugars have been consumed.
don’t forget!
GREASE THE CONTAINER If you don’t grease the vessel the dough rises in, the dough will stick, and you will rip the gluten network when you try to get the dough out of the bowl or when you fold it.
COVER THE BOWL Covering the bowl with plastic wrap prevents the dough from drying out and forming a skin as it rises.
how can you tell if the dough has “doubled in size”?
How you determine if your dough has doubled in size will depend on the vessel you choose for holding it. A glass bowl is a good choice because you can see through it. But for an even easier indicator, you can place your dough in a straight-sided container and stretch a rubber band around the container at the point double in height from the top of the unrisen dough (left). When the dough reaches the band, it is ready to be manipulated (right).
folding dough
For loaves that require more strength or flavor (typically chewy rustic loaves or butter-laden sweet breads), we gently fold the dough over itself as it rises, a process that brings wayward sheets of gluten into alignment. In addition, folding dough rids it of excess carbon dioxide (which can inhibit yeast activity), distributes gas bubbles evenly, and refreshes the yeast. Recipes vary in the number of folds made, the degree to which the bowl is turned, and how many times the process is repeated, but the approach is the same: Slide a greased bowl scraper (you can also use your fingertips) under the edge of the dough and lift and fold the dough toward the center of the bowl (left). Turn the bowl as instructed by the recipe and repeat the process. Turn the bowl and fold one more time. When you’re done, the dough should be shaped like a tight package (right). At this point you let the dough rise for the period of time specified in the recipe, and then repeat the process.
the science of yeast
what is yeast exactly?
Most bakers know that yeast is responsible for making bread dough rise. But fewer bakers know where it comes from or how it’s derived. This magical ingredient is a living organism—a unicellular fungus—that’s found in the environment on fruits and grains, and even in the air. Its function is to consume sugars and starches and convert them into alcohol, releasing carbon dioxide as a by-product. While essential for bread baking, this yeast activity also initiates fermentation in beverages such as beer, wine, kombucha, and kefir.
what does yeast do?
Yeast plays two roles in bread baking: It provides leavening and creates flavor. The yeast finds its food source in sugar. During fermentation, two enzymes present in wheat, amylase and diastase, break down the flour’s complex starch molecules into simple sugars. Upon feeding, the yeast releases carbon dioxide, which allows the loaf to lift and expand; alcohol, which gives the bread flavor; and a multitude of aromatic molecules, which contribute further to the flavor of the bread. This process is called fermentation, and it’s what occurs when bread rises. (Click here for more information on fermentation.)
what controls the activity of yeast?
As long as it’s hydrated and sugar is present, yeast is going make dough expand. But there are various factors that control the extent to which this happens, and at what rate. Knowing how to manipulate each of them will give your bread the best taste and texture.
gluten As we’ve seen, a strong, elastic gluten network is necessary for containing carbon dioxide and allowing the loaf to expand—like blowing air into a balloon. If the gluten network is poorly developed, the yeast will not be able to do its job, because “the balloon” will not be strong enough to hold in the escaping carbon dioxide. This means not only that underkneaded dough compromises the productivity of yeast, but also that highly enriched doughs experience protracted rise, because large quantities of eggs and fat tenderize the dough. As a result, the dough is simply heavier to lift and has more difficulty retaining gas.
sugar Yeast feeds on sugar, so a bit of sugar in the ingredient list—say a tablespoon or two—creates more available food for the yeast and speeds up its activity modestly. It also ensures that there will be more leftover sugar that is not consumed by the yeast during fermentation, so the crust will be darker in color, and the flavor of the loaf will be deeper. However, adding walloping amounts of sugar to dough will not make your dough rise faster; in fact, it will slow it down. Sugar is hygroscopic, meaning that it holds on to moisture. If there is a lot of sugar in dough, it will subtract from the amount of available liquid needed to hydrate the yeast so it can function. That’s why most sweet breads use a higher proportion of yeast. To account for this protracted rise, highly enriched doughs like Panettone include more yeast than the amount used in other recipes. Panettone, for example, contains 2.22 percent of its total weight in yeast, while standard doughs contain around 1.50 percent or much less.
salt If there’s no salt in the dough, the yeast will ferment much too quickly—salt sets the pace. (For more reasons why you should add salt to your bread dough, click here.) But adding too much salt will actually retard fermentation, and you’ll end up with a loaf that lacks volume. Yeast contains a bit of water, and if there is an overabundance of salt the yeast will give up too much of the liquid to the salt through osmosis, and this hinders yeast’s ability to reproduce.
time and temperature For most breads we recommend using room-temperature liquids and letting the dough rise at a cool room temperature (about 70 degrees), not a warm temperature as some recipes call for. At higher temperatures enzymes break down gluten, forcing the yeast to work harder and faster to make the bread rise. Although you’ll see your dough rise faster if you place its container in a warm oven or on a radiator, or if you use liquid that’s been heated to a high temperature before adding it to the dough, too much alcohol will be produced because the yeast must digest much more sugar to create enough carbon dioxide to achieve a decent rise. Less available sugar means less surface browning and less flavor, and the additional alcohol adds a boozy, tangy off-flavor tang to the bread. Moreover, overexerting the yeast can result in an uneven rise.
But what happens if dough rises in cold temperatures, in the refrigerator? So-called cold fermentation is actually a boon to many bread recipes, like our airy, tall Panettone, our chewy Thin-Crust Pizza, and our open-crumbed Sourdough Bread. We often let the dough ferment in the refrigerator—sometimes for up to 72 hours—because we’ve found that we get more flavorful results. Yeast in dough left at room temperature consumes sugars and leavens dough at a relatively fast rate. But then it’s spent; it stops producing not just gas but also compounds that give bread flavor. In cool temperatures, yeast produces carbon dioxide more slowly, resulting in a more uniform rise and providing more time for complex-tasting flavor compounds to develop. To demonstrate how temperature affects the rate of carbon dioxide production in dough, we prepared a yeasted batter and split it into two batches. We placed each in a simple device we fashioned from a test tube and a semipermeable balloon to capture gas. We left one batch out at room temperature and placed the other in the refrigerator, and then monitored the gas production of each at various intervals.
The yeast in the room-temperature batter (top) produced enough gas to fill the balloon within 3 hours but then was spent, while the refrigerated batter (bottom) continued to generate just enough gas to keep the balloon partially filled even after 18 hours.
After 3 hours The batter quickly produces enough carbon dioxide to fill the balloon.
After 18 Hours Yeast cells have died and the balloon has collapsed.
After 3 hours The batter produces a little carbon dioxide to partially fill the balloon.
After 18 hours The batter continues to produce carbon dioxide at a steady rate.
4 dividing & shaping, in depth
At this point, the dough has slowly morphed into an inflated mass that is double its original size. In most cases, the next step, just before shaping the dough into a loaf, is to deflate the dough. This may seem counterintuitive—didn’t you just work to contain all of those expanding gases? The yeast did a lot of work during fermentation—it ate, it expelled gas, it made dough grow. But it’s still hungry, and there’s more it needs to do for our dough before we bake, so it needs a refresher—and access to more food. When you deflate the dough, the gluten relaxes for better extensibility, the temperature of the dough equalizes throughout, and, most important, the yeast is redistributed so new food sources become available for it to consume, the effects of which are seen after shaping, during the second rise.
Once you deflate the dough, it’s time to shape it. The main point of shaping is obvious—to form the dough into the loaf or the rolls it is to become after baking. But the step is also important because it strengthens the bread’s structure one last time. Some doughs are shaped into free-form loaves, some fit snugly in a pan, and some are stretched into flatbread. Regardless of the final form, you want to shape all doughs with a gentle but decisive hand so you don’t work out too much air. At the same time, though, you want to create surface tension on the dough, developing what is called a “gluten sheath” around the interior network. This sturdy sheath gets inflated like a balloon once again during the second rise and keeps the gases within, allowing the loaf to rise up and not out and to hold on to the carbon dioxide, which will give it an airy crumb. Sealing seams as necessary is the last important part of shaping; this ensures they don’t open during baking.
how should you deflate the dough?
Many recipes instruct you to “punch down” the dough after fermentation, but you should take a gentler approach so that you don’t knock out all the air that gives your bread holes—only what is necessary. We use two different techniques for deflating dough, depending on the bread. For doughs for sandwich breads, sweet breads, and rolls, like the one on the left, we instruct you to press down with your hands to deflate the dough. While gentle, this technique ensures that larger bubbles of carbon dioxide escape so the loaf is airy but fairly even crumbed. For most rustic, open-crumbed loaves, like the one on the right, we don’t recommend deflating in the bowl at all; instead, pat out the dough and use your finger to puncture only unwieldy gas pockets that are larger than 1 inch in diameter so that the dough retains a lot of air.
why did the dough rise unevenly?
Loaves that do not have a taut shape with tightly sealed seams can rise unevenly, bake into an unattractive shape, and expand at random points in the top of the loaf, or “blow out.” That’s because creating a taut shape on the outside of the loaf forms a gluten sheath. This strong exterior skin sets the structure of the loaf and prevents the carbon dioxide that is formed during the second rise from escaping at weak points in the dough, so it rises uniformly upward.
step-by-step shaping
sandwich loaves
Sandwich loaves take the form of their pan, obviously, but that doesn’t mean they can be baked without shaping. Rolling the dough into a tight cylinder before transferring it to the pan enforces the gluten structure and prevents the final loaf from being misshapen. To preserve air from the first rise, it is important to work the dough gently; in most cases we use our hands, not a rolling pin, which can overwork the dough. Make sure to lightly flour your hands as well as the counter to keep the dough from sticking. Placing the loaf in the pan seam side down ensures that it doesn’t split open as it rises.
1 Shape the dough into a rectangle Press and stretch the dough into a rectangle, with the long side parallel to the counter edge.
2 Roll the dough into a cylinder Roll the dough away from you into a firm cylinder, keeping the roll taut by tucking it under itself as you go.
3 Pinch the seam Pinch the seam closed with your fingers to secure it.
4 Transfer the loaf to the pan Place the loaf seam side down in a greased 8½ by 4½-inch loaf pan.
5 Press in the corners Gently press the dough into the corners of the pan.
rolls
You first divide roll dough into pieces before shaping. You can weigh the pieces as you cut to help create even-size rolls that cook at the same rate. Turning the dough pieces into neat rolls is a largely one-handed affair, and it might require some practice to feel natural. The key is not to flour the counter; you want the dough to stick a bit so the friction between the dough and the counter helps create a round shape. The dough should spin under your hand but not turn over. Keep pieces of dough that you’re not shaping under plastic wrap so they don’t dry out.
1 Make a log Stretch the dough into an even log.
2 Slice evenly Cut the log into equal pieces and cover them loosely with greased plastic.
3 Stretch and pull Working with one piece of dough at a time, form the dough into a rough ball, stretching it around your thumbs as though you’re turning it inside out, and pinching the ends together so that the top is smooth.
4 Drag and roll Place the ball seam side down and, using your cupped hand, drag the dough in small circles until it feels taut and round.
round loaves (boules)
A round boule is a simple shape to execute, but you can’t simply shape the blob of dough into a round form before baking it. Pressing the dough flat and then folding it back together builds gluten structure that you need in the loaf. Don’t use a rolling pin; you’ll risk deflating the dough. The motion of rounding the dough into the final ball shape is akin to working clay on a pottery wheel—you use both hands to shape and tuck the dough.
1 Shape the dough into a round Press and stretch the dough into a round.
2 Fold in the edges Working around the circumference of the dough, fold the edges toward the center of the round until a ball forms.
3 Drag the dough Flip the dough ball seam side down and, using your cupped hands, drag the dough in small circles until the dough feels taut and round.
torpedos
Like with boules, the dough for long, rounded-end torpedos benefits from being pressed flat and then folded inward to build structure. But there a few more steps you need to complete to make these attractive loaves. We then use a stretching process to coax the dough into the right shape. Rolling the loaf seam side down before transferring it to a baking sheet or pizza peel helps the seam close as the loaf rises a second time.
1 Shape the dough into a square Press and stretch the dough into a square.
2 Fold the top corners Fold the top corners of the dough diagonally into the center and press gently to seal. (The dough will look like an open envelope.)
3 Stretch and fold Stretch and fold the upper third of the dough toward the center, and press the seam gently to seal. (The dough will look like a sealed envelope.)
4 Form a rough loaf Stretch and fold the dough in half toward you to form a rough loaf, and pinch the seam gently to seal. Roll the loaf seam side down.
5 Transfer and tuck Gently slide your hands underneath each end of the loaf and transfer it to the prepared baking sheets or pizza peel, being careful not to deflate it.
6 Reshape After moving the loaf, tuck the edges under to form a taut torpedo shape.
bâtards
Much like a torpedo loaf, a bâtard is oblong, but its shape is a bit more refined, with a larger center and attractive pointed ends. Thus, while the process for forming the two loaves is similar, there are a couple of extra steps required for shaping a bâtard. These rustic loaves typically proof on a couche that has been dusted with flour. (For more information on couches, click here.)
1 Shape the dough into a square Press and stretch the dough into a square.
2 Fold the top and bottom corners Fold the top and bottom corners of the dough diagonally into the center of the square, and press gently to seal. (The dough will have a diamond shape.)
3 Stretch and fold Stretch and fold the upper and bottom thirds of dough toward the center, and press the seam gently to seal.
4 Form a rough loaf Stretch and fold the dough in half toward you to form a rough diamond-shaped loaf, and pinch the seam closed.
5 Transfer and tuck Gently slide your hands underneath each end of the loaf and transfer it seam side up to the prepared linen couche, being careful not to deflate the loaf.
what if the dough is hard to shape?
Although the gluten relaxes during the dough’s first rise, any manipulation of the dough after bulk fermentation can work to bolster the gluten network once again. So as you’re shaping, the dough may seem difficult to stretch or roll, and it could potentially snap back to its original position and fail to form the desired shape or to roll out to the correct size. If you experience this during shaping, simply incorporate a rest into the process: Cover the dough on the counter with plastic wrap and let it sit for 10 to 20 minutes until the dough is easy to manipulate once again. This brief rest gives the gluten network time to relax. Be sure to remember to cover the dough so it doesn’t form a skin.
don’t forget!
MAKE CLEAN CUTS When you divide dough into pieces, every cut you make creates a weak point in the gluten network from which gases can escape. Slicing cleanly—not ripping—through the dough prevents undesirable results.
DIVIDE THE DOUGH EVENLY Even-size dough pieces will rise uniformly. You can weigh pieces to help you.
5 second rise, in depth
Now that the dough has been shaped, it is left to rise a second time, a step called proofing. The goals of proofing are to expand the dough to the appropriate size before baking, relax the dough so the gluten network becomes extensible for rising, make up for any loss of gas bubbles during shaping, and eke out last bits of flavor through additional fermentation. The yeast did most of its work during the first rise, but shaping the dough unlocked more sugars for them to consume, and they create carbon dioxide and alcohol as by-products once again, though to a lesser extent than during the first rise. When properly proofed, the dough will have just the right amount of gas, elasticity, and energy to bake into a well-risen loaf.
In most cases, you transfer the shaped dough either to the vessel in or on which it will bake (this is often a baking sheet), or to a pizza peel, which you’ll use to transfer the loaf to a hot baking stone in the oven, to proof so that you handle the delicate dough minimally when it’s time to bake. You cover the shaped bread with greased plastic wrap and let it sit (usually at a not-too-warm room temperature, like in the first rise) until it has expanded adequately.
science corner
why do some breads rise in the refrigerator?
Some recipes call for transferring the bulk dough to the refrigerator for its first rise, while others do so for a prolonged second rise. At the lower temperature, the yeast releases carbon dioxide more slowly and creates more flavorful sugars, alcohols, and acids. But there’s one more benefit to slowing down (or “retarding”) the second rise in this way: You can bake loaves or buns in the morning and start your day with fresh bread.
when is the dough properly proofed?
Bake a loaf too soon or too late and the quality of the final bread will not reflect the time you spent making it. Here are the methods we use for determining when dough is properly proofed. Below is a loaf, with a uniform shape, crust, and crumb, that was properly proofed.
Test for volume For free-form breads, you can eyeball when they’re ready for the oven. Many doughs will double in size (rustic loaves vary). This process takes anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours at room temperature. For sandwich loaves, we include the number of inches a loaf should rise above the pan.
Use the knuckle test A good trick is to make an indentation in the dough with your finger to determine when it’s properly proofed. Gently poke the loaf with your knuckle. If the indentation fills in right away, the loaf is underproofed and needs to rise further. Conversely, if the indentation fails to fill in, the loaf is overproofed. The loaf is perfectly proofed when the indentation springs back minimally and does not fill in completely.
what happens if I bake underproofed dough?
The crust Underproofed loaves will need to rise too much in the oven to open up the crumb properly. Since the crust sets during the first few minutes of baking, the still-rising dough is forced to break through the crust, resulting in an exaggerated crown on the loaf (as below), an unattractive tear in the crust, or even a small attached loaf lump.
The crumb Without enough time to relax, the gluten network will tear rather than stretch in the oven, so carbon dioxide will escape randomly out of torn areas in the network. As a result, the hole structure can be uneven, with large holes at the edges of the loaf and a dense, gummy center.
what happens if I bake overproofed dough?
The crust When a shaped loaf is allowed to rise for too long before baking, the bread reaches its maximum height and then begins to fall because the structure becomes weak and the gases start to escape. Overproofed bread, therefore, will turn out flat and wide, and the slashes (for more information on slashing a loaf of bread, click here) barely burst open.
The crumb There is such a thing as too much air. Too much gas builds up when a loaf is overproofed; when the loaf collapses, the crumb compresses and becomes dense, tight, and even.
key equipment
baking sheet
A baking sheet is one of our go-to pans for baking bread—but it’s also one of the most versatile pieces of kitchen equipment. You’ll want two baking sheets for baking rolls on two racks or for stacking to provide loaves with extra insulation.
keep it light and thick A light-colored surface will heat and brown evenly, making for perfectly baked loaves. A pan that isn’t thick enough can buckle in the high heat of the bread baker’s oven and transfer heat too intensely, burning loaves.
buy the right size We prefer baking sheets that are 18 by 13 inches with a 1-inch rim all around. This size will accommodate long loaves; plus, if you buy a pan with different dimensions, parchment paper and standard wire cooling racks won’t fit inside.
Wear-Ever Half Size Heavy Duty Sheet Pan (13 Gauge) By Vollrath ($23.25) is a flawless pan and solid as a rock. The pan can’t be twisted, and it doesn’t warp easily.
don’t forget!
GREASE THE PLASTIC WRAP Ungreased plastic wrap will stick to the dough; upon removal, you’ll tear the gluten sheath and create an exit for carbon dioxide, so the loaves may deflate.
6 baking, in depth
If you treat dough with care—knead it adequately to develop gluten, let it rise until airy and flavorful, shape it neatly, and proof it perfectly—it is likely to bake into a beautiful loaf. But getting bread ready for the oven and baking it are not hands-off processes. Often, you need to slash loaves with a knife or single-edge razor blade before they’re baked so they can rise evenly in the oven. Others benefit from being brushed with egg wash to boost browning, or misted with water to encourage a crisp crust. Some breads bake in pans, others on a baking sheet or on a preheated baking stone; each method gives the crust a different quality. Oven temperatures are variable as well. Sandwich and sweet breads bake at moderate temperatures, while rustic loaves bake at higher temperatures. Sometimes we start breads in superhot ovens to encourage them to rise dramatically, then we turn down the temperature to help set the crumb before the exterior burns. And finally, the last step is being sure to bake your breads until just the right point.
slashing loaves
Slashing a loaf cuts through its gluten sheath, creating designated weak spots in a loaf’s surface, which allow the loaf to expand in the right direction in the oven. Without the slashes, the loaf will expand wherever it finds a random weak spot, resulting in an odd shape. For most breads, you can slash with a paring knife or a single-edge razor blade, though we also employ a tool called a lame for the unique slashes on some of our rustic breads. (For more information on lames, click here.) We slash either ¼ or ½ inch deep. Act quickly and decisively when slashing; otherwise, the implement will drag, creating messy lines. These are the three major slashing styles we use for the breads in this book; for more advanced slashing techniques, click here.
sandwich loaves
Some sandwich loaves do not expand much beyond their prebake height in the oven, so they do not require slashing at all. Others, however, require a slash to eliminate unattractive tears. Make one cut lengthwise along the top of the loaf with a swift, fluid motion, starting and stopping ½ inch from the ends.
round loaves (boules)
The most basic slashing style for a boule is a cross. Make two slashes with a swift, fluid motion along the top of the loaf to form an “X.”
torpedos and bâtards
We generally score wide, long loaves with three simple slashes. Make three cuts with a swift, fluid motion across the width of the loaf, spacing the slashes evenly apart.
when is the loaf finished baking?
Judging loaf doneness can be tricky. We use two methods—neither of which we rely on alone—to help us out. First, we provide temperature ranges in most of our recipes to guide when to pull loaves out of the oven. In most cases, a properly baked lean bread should register between 205 and 210 degrees; enriched breads should register between 190 and 195 degrees. For some of our lean, rustic-style breads, however, we provide a temperature range of 210 to 212 degrees. The dough for these breads can be quite wet; baking them longer ensures that the center of the loaf is properly set and not gummy. It also helps to ensure an appropriately dark crust. Use an instant-read thermometer to take the bread’s internal temperature, sliding the probe all the way to the center of the loaf.
But internal temperature alone is not sufficient proof that bread is fully baked. We’ve found that color is the ultimate indicator. If you pull a loaf as soon as it comes to temperature, it could have a pale, soft crust and a gummy interior. If you wait until the crust reaches the indicated color, it will have more flavor and a perfectly baked crumb. Bread contains moisture, so the temperature of a loaf’s crumb plateaus because it cannot rise above the boiling point of water (212 degrees). That means that bread that registers 210 degrees won’t overbake if you leave it in the oven until the exterior is properly browned. Both of the breads below temp within the proper range, yet the loaf on the left has too light a crust and needs to keep baking for better flavor. The loaf on the right also temps within the desired doneness range and has a nice finish; it’s ready to be pulled from the oven.
what should the crust look like?
We use four different colors to describe the final exterior appearance of a loaf: light golden brown, golden brown, deep golden brown, and dark brown. Color means flavor, so we generally want more of it on our breads; however, there are some breads, like our Pain de Mie, that are best with the barest of crusts; you want to sink your teeth right into this light sandwich bread, and so we bake it to a light golden brown. An appealingly golden brown crust signifies that the loaf’s exterior will have slightly more presence and flavor. On our Pane Francese, this color indicates a flavorful crust that’s crisp around the ridges but still tender, like a good loaf of basic French bread. A deep golden brown coloring is what gives loaves a homey feel, like on our American Sandwich Bread. And finally, there’s the dark brown loaf. Chewy, thick-crusted artisan-style loaves, like our Pain de Campagne, sport this coloring that goes along with a substantial crust with crispness and chew.
what if the crust is dark but the interior is still underdone?
Some breads can quickly develop a deep brown, bitter-tasting crust before the center of the loaf finishes cooking. For example, the brown sugar in our Cranberry-Walnut Loaf caused the crust to burn during testing. Our solution? Rather than bake at the high temperatures associated with loaves of this kind, we preheated the oven to 450 degrees and then reduced the oven temperature to 375 degrees after 15 minutes of baking. The higher initial temperature gives the bread the oven rise it needs; immediately lowering the temperature allows the loaf to bake through slowly and evenly. If you see a crust getting dark during baking before its due time—this is common for enriched breads like Panettone—you can tent the bread with aluminum foil to slow browning.
what pan should you use?
Oven temperature alone doesn’t dictate how your crust will turn out. Sandwich breads, rolls, and enriched breads usually bake in specific pans or dishes that give them shape. But there are a few options for free-form breads and flatbreads. A baking sheet is the basic, standard choice; it will evenly brown loaves and will ensure that even the most delicate rolls and buns, like St. Lucia Buns, don’t develop a too-thick crust. For some breads, like our hearty loaf of Deli Rye Bread or our blonde Scali Bread, we stack two baking sheets and line them with insulating aluminum foil to protect the bottom crust from browning too deeply.
On other breads, typically the rustic variety or pizzas, a thicker bottom crust that you can crunch through to a chewy, open crumb is desirable. That’s when we employ a baking stone, preheated so it matches the oven’s temperature and can store that heat and transfer it to your bread. The blast of heat from below will give your breads an airier crumb and a fire- roasted finish. A baking stone helps our Pane Francese develop a satisfying, golden brown crust completely unlike the sad coverings of supermarket French bread.
A final pan option is a covered Dutch oven, which we use for some round loaves to easily achieve a dramatic open-crumbed structure and a shatteringly crisp crust. As a loaf heats, it gives off steam to create a very humid environment inside the Dutch oven. Since moist air transfers heat much more efficiently than dry air does, the loaf heats more rapidly and therefore expands more rapidly, opening up the crumb. Further, as steam condenses on the surface of the bread, it causes starches to create a thin sheath that eventually dries out, giving the loaf a shiny crust that stays crisp.
key equipment
instant-read thermometer
An instant-read thermometer, coupled with knowledge of how temperature relates to bread’s doneness, can help ensure success.
buy a digital model These models are easier than dial-face models to use because you can take a quick look and immediately know the temperature of your loaf.
look for a long stem A long stem is key for measuring the temperature at the very center of a large loaf.
a quick response is vital You don’t want to keep your hand in the oven any longer than necessary, so a thermometer that takes more than 5 to 10 seconds to warm up and respond isn’t very helpful.
water-resistant is good Kitchen mishaps can occur. If your thermometer is water-resistant, it won’t be down for the count if you accidentally drop it in water.
The new ThermoWorks Thermapen Mk4 ($99) takes all the accuracy and speed of the company’s Classic Super- Fast Thermapen ($79) and adds some nifty features: Its display auto-rotates, and it lights up in low light and wakes up when the unit is picked up. It takes a single AAA alkaline battery and is more water-resistant than the Classic, capable of surviving a half-hour bath.
don’t forget!
TURN DOWN THE HEAT Many breads’ rise and crust benefit from a quick blast of heat. But we often then turn down the temperature to cook the bread through. Don’t leave your bread in the oven and forget it: The exterior will burn before the interior cooks.
the science of baking bread
what actually happens to bread in the oven?
We’ve talked about the science at play when dough is made and prepared for baking. But what’s actually happening in the oven? Amylose starches in flour go through a process called gelatinization: Once heated, the starches absorb water until they burst once a loaf reaches its internal doneness temperature. When the starches burst, they set into a solid mass, which forms your bread’s crumb. And this is how a ball of soft dough becomes sliceable bread.
But the starches in the dough aren’t the only molecules affected by the oven’s heat. Throughout the bread-making process, enzymes have been converting some of the starch molecules into sugars—the key to bread’s flavor. Sugar’s presence is obvious in the brown crust of a baked loaf. Unlike the interior of a loaf of bread, which cannot heat above the boiling point of water (212 degrees), the exterior is exposed to the heat of the surrounding oven, which is hot enough to caramelize the sugars and create a great-tasting crust and flavor compounds that travel inward for a similarly great-tasting crumb. On the inside, all that protein that formed our gluten network breaks down into simpler amino acids as the loaf heats. These cook and combine with other molecules to give the bread a flavorful, clean-tasting crumb.
what is oven spring?
Oven spring is the rise that yeasted dough experiences when it first hits a hot oven. The more “spring,” the taller the loaf and the airier the crumb. Baking bread at a higher temperature results in more dramatic oven spring; bread dough is full of water, which will vaporize rapidly and open up the crumb, causing the loaf to expand. To demonstrate this, we baked the well-hydrated Pain de Campagne at two different temperatures, 350 and 450 degrees. The difference in the height and crumb of the loaves is clear: The Pain de Campagne baked at the higher temperature is taller and more open—perfect for a rustic bread.
7 cooling & storing, in depth
The hard work is over, and your reward is a beautifully browned, lofty loaf of bread with an appetite-inducing aroma. But there is one more difficult step: resisting the urge to slice the warm bread! The interior of a loaf needs to cool from the 190 to 210 degrees it was when it emerged from the oven to room temperature. During this time, the starches continue to gelatinize (for more information on gelatinization, click here), excess moisture evaporates, and the true flavor of the loaf comes to the fore. We’ve found that this can take 3 hours for most large loaves. For perfect cooling, take your bread or rolls off their cooking surface or out of the pan and transfer them (after a brief wait, in some cases) to a wire rack so that air can circulate, preventing escaping moisture from softening the crust. Once this wait period is complete, you can finally slice your homemade creation. The tool you use is of utmost importance. Chef’s knives may be sharp, but they’ll squash the crumb of your loaf as you press down on it. A serrated knife, in contrast, relies on a slicing motion in which the blade is dragged across the bread’s surface as it moves down through it, so it preserves the bread’s crust and interior holes.
key equipment
serrated knife
A serrated knife, or bread knife, features pointed serrations that allow it to glide through crusty breads and bagels to create neat slices.
look for a 10- to 12-inch blade Knives shorter than 10 inches tend to catch their tips on larger loaves. Also, the blade should be slightly flexible for better maneuverability, yet firm enough to allow for proper control.
a curved blade makes cutting easier A slightly curved blade facilitates a rocking motion to keep knuckles from scraping the cutting board.
go for pointed, not wavy, serrations Pointed serrations give the blade a good grip on the loaf right away, while wavy serrations slide around.
Our favorite serrated knife is the Wüsthof Classic Bread Knife, 10 Inches ($89.95). This well-balanced knife with deeply tapered pointed serrations handled every task with exceptional ease and control. But we also highly recommend our Best Buy, the Victorinox 10¼-Inch Fibrox Pro Serrated (Wavy/Curvy) Bread Knife ($49.95). Its comfortable, sharp blade and pointed serrations performed almost as well as our top knife, struggling a tad more with crusty bread.
why did my sandwich loaf collapse?
Because sandwich loaves are often baked in a loaf pan, they trap steam and are not yet fully set when they’re done baking. Remove the bread from the pan immediately, and the loaf can collapse. Let a sandwich loaf cool in its pan for 15 minutes before transferring it to a wire rack for cooling so the loaf maintains the proper shape.
how should you store bread?
Without preservatives to keep it tasting fresh, homemade bread can quickly stale. In general, you will find that sweet breads, enriched with butter and sugar, and sourdough breads, bolstered with a starter, last longer than the typical lean loaf at room temperature. Here’s how to keep different types of bread fresh for as long as possible.
sandwich bread
Sandwich breads are great to have on hand for lunches for a few days. And since they generally don’t have thick, crunchy crusts, you don’t have to worry about their exteriors softening if you wrap them. Wrap loaves in a double layer of plastic wrap and store them at room temperature for up to three days. Wrapped first in aluminum foil before the plastic, sandwich loaves can be frozen for up to one month. If you don’t plan to use the whole loaf at once, slice it and freeze the slices in a zipper-lock bag, thawing individual slices when you want them. While you can thaw slices of bread on the counter, they will taste fresher if you thaw them in the microwave. As frozen bread warms, its starch molecules begin to form crystalline regions, which absorb the water in bread. The process, called retrogradation, will eventually produce a dry, stale texture. The best way to thaw frozen bread is to place the slices on a plate (uncovered) and microwave them on high power for 15 to 25 seconds. This will get the starch and water molecules to break down the crystalline regions, producing soft, ready-to-eat bread.
rustic bread
We’ve found that storing loaves of rustic bread cut side down on a cutting board works better than wrapping them in paper or plastic. The crust will stay dry, while contact with the board will keep moisture inside the crumb. After 1 day, slice the bread, wrap the slices tightly in aluminum foil, place them in a zipper-lock bag, and freeze them. Thaw the slices at room temperature or in the microwave or oven. Alternatively, if you wrap, bag, and freeze unsliced full loaves or half-loaves, heat the thawed bread, still wrapped in foil, in a 450-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes, then crisp it by removing the foil and returning it to the oven for a minute or two.
rolls
Rolls and buns are often enriched and thus still taste great after being stored in a zipper-lock bag at room temperature for up to two days. Wrapped in foil before being placed in the bag, rolls can be frozen for up to one month. To reheat rolls, wrap them (thawed if frozen) in aluminum foil, place them on a rimmed baking sheet, and bake them in a 350-degree oven for 10 minutes.
slicing rustic bread
Often, the bread knife fails to cut all the way through the thick bottom crust of artisan-style loaves, leaving you to yank the slice free from the loaf, often tearing it in the process. To get around the problem and cut perfect slices, turn the loaf on its side to cut it. This way, you’ll be able to cut through both top and bottom crusts simultaneously.
science corner
keep bread out of the refrigerator
Once exposed to air, bread starch undergoes a process called retrogradation. When bread bakes, the starch molecules absorb water and lose their structure, giving fresh bread its moist chew. But as the bread cools and sits, the starch molecules in the bread recrystallize, turning the bread hard and crumbly. Storing bread in the refrigerator to delay staling may seem like a good idea, but this actually shortens the shelf life. The cool temperatures of the refrigerator speed up the retrogradation process.
how to revive stale bread
What if bread has undergone retrogradation? Is it destined for bread crumbs? To revive bread, gradually heat the loaf to the gelation point (about 140 degrees)—but do not heat it to the boiling point of water (212 degrees). In addition, with crusty breads, you also need to supply water to the exterior of the loaf to ensure that the starches can properly soften. Briefly pass crusty bread under cold running water. Wrap the loaf tightly with foil, place it on the middle rack of a cold oven, and heat the oven to 300 degrees. After about 30 minutes (15 to 20 minutes for small or narrow loaves like baguettes), remove the foil and return the loaf to the oven for about 5 minutes to crisp the crust. Note that reheating a stale loaf doesn’t free the starches to move around the way that they can in a just-baked loaf, and they recrystallize much more quickly. The effect lasts for only a few hours.
honors class
So far, we’ve broken down the process of bread baking from start to finish. Once you’ve performed these steps a few times, you’ll see how easy—and rewarding—it is to make bread a part of your repertoire, and you’ll know how to navigate and troubleshoot new recipes that come your way. But bread baking is a lifetime education, and there are always new moves you can experiment with to get the results that you see in the windows of the best boulangeries. In this section, we build on the basic routine, introducing more advanced techniques for giving your already-great bread even more flavor and flair.
baking with whole-wheat flour
There are a lot of reasons to introduce whole-wheat flour into your breads: It’s healthful, it has nice color, it can give a loaf heartiness, and it boasts a nutty taste that provides bread with great depth of flavor. As the name implies, whole-wheat flour is ground from the whole wheat berry—the outer bran layer, the germ, and the endosperm—whereas white flour is ground from just the endosperm. Because it contains the entire berry, however, baking with whole-wheat flour is a real challenge.
The problem lies with the bran—the very thing that gives whole-wheat flour its character. The fiber in bran has sharp edges that tend to cut the gluten strands, weakening their bonds and making the dough less able to contain gases during proofing and baking. The result is a squat, heavy, crumbly loaf. So what can you do to put healthful whole-wheat breads on your table?
combine whole-wheat flour with bread flour
You should cut the whole-wheat flour in a recipe with some higher-protein bread flour and not with all-purpose flour (unless you’re making a soft, fluffy roll, like our Honey-Wheat Dinner Rolls). Whole loaves, like our Whole-Wheat Sandwich Bread and our Rustic Wheat Berry Bread, need structure, and the bread flour automatically gives your bread a boost in gluten-forming proteins and therefore gluten development, making up for the structure-compromising activity of the whole-wheat flour.
make it wet
You can soften the whole-wheat flour’s bran by letting the bran absorb a lot of water in a highly hydrated dough. This can make the dough a bit more difficult to work with, but it will blunt the bran’s sharp edges that cut through gluten strands.
use a soaker
When you have the time, the ultimate way to get whole-wheat flour to behave in a bread recipe is to employ a soaker—simply soak the whole-wheat flour or the whole grain (like in our Rustic Wheat Berry Bread) in some of the water or other liquid from the recipe prior to mixing and kneading it with the other ingredients, or before grinding it. A presoak accomplishes three things: First, it softens the bran’s edges. Second, its hydrating effect prevents the grains from robbing moisture from the dough, which would toughen the crumb. Third, steeping the grains activates the wheat’s enzymes, converting some starches into sugars and, in turn, reducing the bran’s natural bitterness and coaxing out a sweet flavor.
On the left is a close-up crumb shot of our Whole-Wheat Sandwich Bread made according to our recipe, with a soaker. You can see it has a lighter texture. Its flavor is nutty. The bread on the right was made without presoaking the whole-wheat flour. It has a dense texture and a bitter flavor.
baking with sponges
You can certainly make great-tasting bread by adding yeast straight to all of your dry ingredients. But once you’ve mastered making a “straight” dough, as this is called, it’s well worth learning how to take it further to achieve the complex flavor and appealingly rustic texture of bakery loaves. We do this in chapter six of this book by introducing the sponge (also called poolish in French, or biga in Italian), which is what the professionals use to start rustic-style bread recipes.
A sponge is a mixture of a portion of a recipe’s flour, yeast, and water, which is allowed to ferment for at least 6 hours or up to 24 hours before it is added to the bulk of the bread dough. It is for that reason that a sponge is considered a type of pre-ferment. During this pre-fermentation time, the flour’s carbohydrates and starches, which have little flavor of their own, break down into a multitude of sugars, acids, and alcohols and develop mildly sour and nutty flavors. Another bonus: The acid developed strengthens a rustic bread dough’s gluten network, so that breads made with a sponge have an appealingly open crumb and a welcome chew.
Once the sponge ferments, it’s added to more flour, yeast, and water to build a bread dough. Sure, this method adds time to your recipes, but it’s hands-off and couldn’t be simpler. Working with sponges grows the skills you’ve already mastered to unlock a whole new world of breads—impressive loaves like the slightly tangy, open-crumbed French country loaf known as Pain de Campagne or the Caramelized Onion Bread that features sweet and savory caramelized onions swirling through a chewy interior.
what should the sponge look like?
The key to using a sponge is to let it rise (about 2 hours; left) and then wait for it to begin to fall (another 4 hours; right) before using it. The fall is not dramatic, but it indicates that the yeast is active and ready to go. Once the sponge has fallen, it can be held for up to 24 hours at room temperature before using, or it can be refrigerated for several days.
baking with starters
While most of the recipes in this book call for commercial yeast, breads can be leavened naturally without any commercial leavener at all by using a sourdough starter. A labor of love that a baker can keep alive indefinitely, a starter begins as a culture that you make yourself. A culture is a mixture of flour and water that contains a “colony” of two organisms—“lactic acid” bacteria (Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis and several relatives) and yeasts (Saccharomyces cerevisiae or one of several Candida species)—living in harmony. The yeast is derived from the air and from the flour since wild yeast is present on the kernels of wheat; it takes time—two or three days—for them to multiply to the point where they are abundant enough to leaven a loaf of bread. You’ll know your culture is ready because it will be bubbly and will have a strong aroma.
Once your culture is established, you then have to feed a portion of it with more flour and water, once every 24 hours, until the culture is pleasantly aromatic and rises and falls within an 8- to 12-hour period after being fed. This takes about ten to fourteen days. But if you’re patient, this process will give you a refreshed sourdough starter that you can bake with and maintain.
adding a rest to your dough
We’ve learned that adequate kneading is necessary to build gluten structure in bread doughs. But if you want to make a rustic bread from a wet dough that has a chewy crumb and the structure to support large, open holes, the standard kneading time often isn’t enough. Knead for too long, however, and the dough can oxidize and bake into a pale, stale-tasting loaf. (For more information on overkneading dough, click here.) How can we fortify our gluten structure for a superlatively chewy, open crumb? We employ a technique called autolyse. In this method, the dry and wet ingredients go through step one of the process, mixing; then, the shaggy dough is left to rest before proceeding with kneading. While the mixture rests, naturally occurring enzymes (proteases) break down the disorganized bonds of gluten, acting like scissors, cutting the coiled-up proteins into smaller segments that are easier to strengthen and align during kneading, so they require less time.
hold the salt
Hold the salt when mixing doughs that will undergo autolyse: Salt hinders both the ability of flour to absorb water and the activity of the enzymes that break down proteins during autolyse. If you add the salt up front, the dough will be sticky and stiff after autolyse. If you wait to add the salt, the dough will get a head start in gluten development and will be supple and smooth.
beautifying your bread
A nicely browned crust and a crumb full of well-formed interior holes are enough to make any homemade bread a sight to behold. But you can recreate the rustic, almost-too-pretty-to-eat loaves that artisan bakeries display at home. We’ve detailed the hows and whys of crafting your own bread masterpieces.
advanced slashing techniques
While the slashes on loaves are primarily functional (for more information on slashing bread, click here), the pattern is open to embellishment. These fun flourishes create beautiful motifs on your loaves. For each design, use a lame and, unless otherwise instructed, hold the blade at a 30-degree angle to the loaf.
for round loaves (boules)
square Make four 6-inch-long, ½-inch-deep slashes with a swift, fluid motion to form a square, with slashes intersecting ½ inch from each end in the corners of the square.
spiral Starting at the center of the loaf, make one ½-inch-deep slash with a swift, fluid motion in one outward spiral, ending the spiral 1 inch from the edge.
for bâtards
five slashes Make five evenly spaced ½-inch-deep slashes with a swift, fluid motion across the width of the loaf, starting and stopping about ½ inch from the ends. (The central slash should be 6 inches long, the second slashes on either side should be 5 inches long, and the end slashes should be 3 inches long.)
leaf Make three 3-inch-long, ½-inch-deep parallel slashes with a swift, fluid motion at a 45-degree angle in a mirror image on either side of an imaginary line down the center of the loaf, staggering each slash about ¾ inches from the previous slash, starting and stopping ½ inch from the ends, and spacing the slashes about 1½ inches apart.
achieving a crackling crust
Some breads are popped into the oven right after they’ve completed the second rise. For others, we spray the surface of the dough with water or paint it with egg wash in order to achieve bread with a crisp or shiny crust, respectively. But we also employ a couple of specialty proofing tools and techniques to put the finishing touches on artisan-style rustic breads.
working with a couche
Professional bakers proof some free-form loaves in the folds of a piece of heavy linen known as a couche. The couche has two core jobs: It helps the loaf hold its shape, and it wicks away moisture, keeping the dough’s surface uniformly dry as it proofs and rises, helping develop a thin “skin” that bakes up to the perfect crisp, chewy, attractively floured crust.
working with a banneton
Bakers achieve symmetrical round loaves of bread (boules) by transferring the dough to shallow, woven baskets known as bannetons or brotforms for the last rising step before baking. The cloth-lined basket serves two functions: It retains the round shape of the loaf as it proofs, and its breathable construction wicks away moisture from the dough’s surface, much like the couche does, for a crispier, browner crust. We’ve found that you can improvise a banneton at home by lining a 5-quart metal or plastic colander with a linen dish towel and dusting the towel liberally with flour, and we use this simple technique in our recipes. But if you’re inclined to purchase these inexpensive baskets, you’ll find that they’re not just lightweight and convenient; they mark your bread with a beautiful floured spiral. As the dough expands when it proofs, it makes its way into the ridges of the banneton, so the pattern is transferred onto the loaf’s surface.
moisture makers: lava rocks and steam pans
For dinner rolls and sandwich loaves, baked either in pans or free-form, a mist of water before baking is an adequate way to get a good crust that’s appropriate for these breads. But for thick, crisp-crusted, dramatic-looking rustic loaves, a steamy oven is a bread’s best friend. Professional bakers use steam-injected ovens for three reasons. For starters, a moist environment transfers heat more rapidly than dry heat does, allowing the gases inside the loaf to expand quickly in the first few minutes of baking, ensuring maximum volume. At the same time, steam prevents the bread’s exterior from drying out too quickly, which would create a rigid structure that limits rise. Finally, as we’ve learned, moisture converts the exterior starches into a thin coating of gel that eventually results in the glossy, crackly crust that is a hallmark of a great artisan-style loaf.
So how can you make a home oven as steamy as possible? Many recipes suggest adding boiling water or ice cubes to the oven; the problem is that home ovens cannot retain moisture long enough for their impact to be felt on the finished bread. We’ve come up with a more effective approach: using lava rocks. These irregularly shaped rocks (available at many hardware stores for use in gas grills) have a lot of surface area for absorbing and retaining heat, maximizing the amount of steam produced when boiling water is introduced. We begin using lava rocks in the oven in chapter six, and we highly recommend the technique—we’ve found that it simply gives you the best bread. To use them, adjust an oven rack to the lowest position. Fill two aluminum pie plates with 1 quart of lava rocks each and place them on the rack before heating the oven. When your bread is ready for the oven, pour ½ cup of boiling water into one of the plates of lava rocks and close the oven door for 1 minute to create an initial burst of steam. Then, working quickly, transfer the loaf to the oven and pour ½ cup of boiling water into the second plate of rocks. This one-two punch ensures that the oven stays steamy for the entire baking time.
